Author Notes:

I'm basically having a good time at GameStorm for not knowing much about it until this month and going at the last minute. Though I have had one really positive experience. Did you know I'd had next to no exposure to D&D Organized Play?

Back in high school, I played Magic: the Gathering a lot with my friends, and that was my main reason for going to game shops. But I never had much money of my own, so I never went alone and never spent anything, and when I dropped the Magic habit, I generally stopped going to game shops in general. And when I went to college and when I got my first job, I had so little spare time that anything they had to offer me was just not something I could manage.

Over that period of time, I've used the comic and more recently the Skype game/podcast to fill the gap, all of which easily done from home and in less time.

So while I was vaguely aware that playing D&D in some official capacity was a thing, I only had my first taste of it (and 5e!) this Thursday. It was the highlight of my con experience so far, and the scheduling works much better in this time of my life, so I might start making it a habit at my local game shops when I can.

I really like Munchkin D20's response to time travel. You can take a feat that creates a future you, with improved stats, feats, equipment, etc. But it goes on to warn you. If you or your double ever touch, you both explode with the effect of antimatter. If you ever gain a feat or effect your double doesn't have, you both explode. If any doubled equipment ever touches, you both explode, and so on... of course, this being Munchkin, there are ways for the player to fast-talk their way out of this.

The Great and Powerful Trixie was sent into the 23rd century once for an afternoon. She took down half a dozen police officers who were all armed, so it's kind of sad that the 23rd century got it's butt handed to it by a fantasy unicorn that barely had experience with steam engines and Bakelite.

They sent Trixie back home on the condition she never tells anyone of what happened. :)

You know, it's stories like this that make me really sad that I will never be in a group with Trixie the Great and Powerful. I mean, these tales are the only reason I like that pony at all in the first place.

My old group was tired of time travel, which the GM resorted to any time we broke his plot. As our mutiny, we somehow wordlessly agreed to just break it worse every time we went back in time to fix our own failures.

Accidentally plunged the alliance into war? Go back in time to prevent it, instead destroy the alliance in its infancy.

I once ran a Mutants and Masterminds campaign where one of the heroes was time travel based. He'd come up with a version of Deja-Fu where he applied Seeking and Rapid Fire to his melee attacks. If he ever missed a punch, there was a good chance it would land the next round and he'd say that he'd punched you in your future.

Ha also took the nemesis complication, so he had to deal with Retro, a time cop from an aborted timeline who was understandably upset about not technically existing. Retro's shtick was altering the immediate past in his favor. Regeneration fluffed as changing it so he never took the hit, ranged trips where a mop had suddenly been there all along, that sort of thing.

One session we went REALLY over the top with it. The hero's entire history was changing by the round as causality was twisted around. One minute he suddenly had a sidekick, the next the sidekick was pulling a Red Hood, and then went back to quietly not having ever existed. For a while Retro was a fully sanctioned officer from the right and proper future. Even the other players got in on it, free to switch to tangential powersets at will and blame it on the shifting past.

It was very silly and enormous fun and I kind of regret hitting the reset button on it.

One of my groups once did a filler side-story mid-campaign where we wound up visiting a castle in an alternate dimension that was heavily inspired by Castlevania. As we searched the castle, we learned that our exact party had apparently visited this castle countless times before, and every time before now we had all met gruesome fates of various sorts. Our cleric used Speak With Dead on our bard's skeleton at one point, while the living bard was in the room; we parlayed with a corrupted-but-quite-genial version of our Monk who had somehow become immortal Monty-Python's-Black-Knight-style...and one of the minibosses was composed entirely of several dozen slain copies of our multiclass DPS-heavy ranger.

As part of the loot from clearing that mission, my character got the same exact huge diamond three times, and another version of me had used a fourth copy of the diamond as a material component for a ninth-level spell.

In a larp a few years back, I npc'd a divine messenger sent to put the party on track. I spoke to them all as if I knew them well (they were all well established characters) even though they had never met me. In the evening portion of the game they were cast into a time warp to arrive many years earlier, and of course just in time to deal with the great nasty thing that was occuring. The party happened upon me, playing the same npc, but of course, i had no idea who they were. The confusion was cleared up soon enough and a great deal of stomping followed for the good of all, but its always a nice touch when your time travel plots remember that events happen out of synch for some folks.

I and the group I was apart of had to go back in time about ten years to stop the Equestrian empire from opening it new tourist trap, Pre-Historic Park (We couldn't think of one good name to replace Jurassic park).

We had to go in, about a week before the park opened, and try to convince the curators (Twilight Sparkle: historian, Fluttershy: Animal caretaker, and, oddly enough, Zecora: Animal specialist) to close it down, and take out the dinosaurs, before it opened, and almost all of the guests were eaten.

We knew the task would be near impossible, especially with the funders of the park having preinstalled all of the security, and my back story saying I was here somewhere, working as a janitor.

Long story short, I met myself, and we fought together against some dinosaurs. There was one point where we grabbed hooves, and smack a raptor across the face with some iron boots. Despite defeating it, the GM said that I was screwed, now that I touched myself.

This promted me to counter diplomacy him with saying that I am not him, cause I am C.T (Chaos Theory), and he is (at the time) Old Bones. On top of that, the time period I came from, I didn't run into any weird pony who started waving a gun around like a mad person, stating that the different experiences made us different ponies.

The GM still hates me to this day for getting away with that. Of course, he made it really bad for me when we returned to our normal time period, stating I was a random runner who jumped into the portal (cause then I would have never joined up with a research facility that would return to certain time periods and try to fix history). He hates more for beating that by getting the rest of the team on my side, stating I "invaluable and useful". It also turned out that we made the world worse somehow, woops.

The only experience I've had with time travel was when a cleric decided to go back in time to prevent himself from saving my fighter's life so he could get a bigger share of the treasure at the end of our adventure. Otherwise, my groups tend to avoid time travel like the plague. It's bad enough that everything we get involved in gets destroyed in one way or another. Imagine what would happen if we attempted to back in time and rewrite anything.

For all my love of time travel, I have had very few games featuring it. Yet. I have plans.

However, my brother has had one game with a lot of time travel. In particular, he was playing a Warhammer 40k game. The party was on a Rogue Trader ship, and ended up going into the Warp. Now the Warp has a certain chance of pushing you forwards in time... And they kept on getting that. Eventually the GM had to rule that they couldn't go further in time, as they had caught up to the farthest future published for the series. ...I think they should have just time looped to the farthest back time period.

I didn't have to deal with it per say, because I was the one DMing it. It was an endgame mission to a massive super long, save the world plot, I'd had my group running around to accomplish. They'd collected everything they needed to confront the tower, and retrieve the Earthsoul they'd been searching for all along, which...is exactly what you think it is, it's the planet's actual soul, and without it, it was slowly dying...so, seeing as they'd been taking their sweet ass time, the world was going to shit, and time was now of the essence. This had given Lucian PLENTY of time though to invent some nasty new floorplans for the entire tower, warping time and space for each room. There was no logical flow of rhyme or reason to where the team would end up next as they traveled from "room" to "room" in the tower. I'd created a randomization chart for each room as they came to it, and each result would dictate the kind of environment, time period, monster encounters, possible loots/hidden rooms, and all that good stuff, getting progressively harder as they go "up" the tower. I regulated it all perfectly, but as ANY DM knows, players can fuck over any plans in an instant without even trying. This time though, they fucked themselves over, instead of my plans, lol! They'd rolled up a Frozen Tundra environment, and the monsters were particularly weak for their level, but the number of them, and the way the mage decided to handle them, well, that's the problem. They were unable to avoid the encounter with the 4 Frost Worms they'd rolled up, and the Wizard was pretty cock, he'd made a pretty vicious blaster type that could shred through just about anything, and he set the group to herding the worms up, so he could just blast them all in one go. They got the worms all herded up, and he used a special relic...I forget what it is, but it allows a player to make another action that round, so he cast two fireballs, both with the maximize metamagic feat, effectively nuking them as planned. What he DIDN'T know or count on, is the Frost Worm's parting shot, Death Throes, wherein they explode doing 12D6 cold damage, and 8D6 pierce damage to everything within 100 feet, with a Ref save for half. Only the Wizard was out of that range, and every other party member, roughed up a bit from the rest of the tower, didn't succeed enough to survive the blast. Every last character but the wizard died there and he didn't last much longer, as the corrupted temporal and spacial environment wouldn't allow for a teleport, and he had no other means of which to get out without backtracking through all the tower rooms they'd been through already, alone, and that they'd all be completely randomized again, because the party had already left them. His parting shot came to him, when he found himself in an underwater environment with no way to breathe...it wasn't pretty.

Every time I've ever ended up in a time travel situation it's never ended well. Either someone sleeps with their own grandmother, kills an ancestor, ruptures the fabric of space and time, or some weird combo of the three. My last time ended with our rouge sleeping with his grandmother after he killed with grandfather which caused the cataclysm we had come back in time to stop. Paradoxes, wonderful things. Needless to say our rouge was never found again.

In a matter of fashion. My Halfling character's campaign occasionally had our characters flashback to previous lives and see the insights to what happened then to current time. And I was stuck with the trouble-causing gnome back then, too.

Oh do I! Time Travel saved me from having a solo battle with a dragon, I was a Kobold rouge at the time!

Ok so we were in a town, king gets killed while giving a speech, we fight the assassins, during the confusion I snag the kings crown, he don't need it, he's dead.

DM couldn't DM for the next game so we had a substitute.
We time travel and come across the king as a kid, the substitute DM makes a joke and has the kid say he's going to that town with dreams of being a king. I give the crown to him saying a king needs a crown. (I had my rouge only steal from bad people or dead people, the king was no longer dead so I had to return it)

Next Game DM is back.
End up traveling back to the future. We are in a dungeon with a puzzle involving doors that open and close and stuff. I look inside one of the rooms checking for traps with everyone outside the room. Door slides down trapping me...I wasn't a good rouge I guess. A dragon comes down from the ceiling looking ready to fight. Lucky me one of my extra tongues is draconic, I shower him with praises and then challenge him to a history quiz, he accepts. I ask where the king of that town got his crown, the DM not knowing about my shenanigans says that he had it commissioned....I shout HA! No he didn't, I traveled in time and gave it to him my self! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

I've dabbled with time travel in a few games. The best method I found was based on the Babylon 5 time travel 2 parter. The idea is that the PC's actions are what *cause* events in the first place. They aren't changing anything, they're just making sure it all actually happens.

The PC's found an ancient alien device which apparently was active for about 5 minutes. In that time, it bounced all over the timestream, and messed a few races up. Along the way, the PC's discover that this machine is responsible for preventing an alien race from conquering the galaxy. If they *had*, the Human race would have been wiped out roughly during the time Napoleon was trying to conquer Europe. Absolutely zero chance to save humanity. Therefore, the only solution is to preserve the change, and make sure it happens the way it was recorded.

Ironically, we had one yahoo in the party who wanted to restore the original continuity, knowing it would end the game and damn humanity in the process. They stuffed him into the tank, and tied him up until the event passed. Yes, the tank. I may have forgotten to mention they started their jumps connected to the ancient Alien "Catcher" device inside a captured alien tank...

Time travel was a key element of the old Feng Shui TTRPG. The setting had a cool conceit: There's a dimension outside of time and space called the Netherworld, which has portals that open onto specific points in history.

For the base setting of the game, these are 69 AD, 1856 AD, 1996 AD (alternately, just 'the year you're playing in'), and 2056 AD. So you have ancient China, the Victorian era, the modern age, and a post-apocalyptic future (things in the official setting go really wrong in the decade or so before 2056).

There's two types of 'shifts' that occur from changes in the timeline. Minor shifts just have history re-fold itself into about the same shape, but with some of the names changed. Kill Hitler's grandfather in 1856, and Adolf Hessler launches WWII after failing to become a sculptor.

To institute an actual change in history, called a 'critical shift', you have to first control chi sites. So much of the game is centered around locating and mastering these places of power.

Netherwalkers--people who have entered the Netherworld--are immune to shifts, which prevents them from suffering paradox, but also means they can end up being unaware of their own personal history in the new present. It's not much for a minor shift--you might have to learn your brother's name over again. But a lot of minor shifts, or a single critical shift, can disorient a Netherwalker completely.

I ran a group in the game without warning them about the time-travel aspect; I simply told them that it was a Hong Kong cinema game and had them give me rough concepts which I forged into characters, handed out the sheets, taught them the system and went to town.

Of course, session 1, they 'accidentally' traveled to the Netherworld, went back to 1856, and found out that they'd tweaked the modern world, including most of their backstories, when they returned. Since their actions including shifting control of a minor feng shui site between factions, the effects were profound on the personal level, even though major events were still settled.

Ah, time travel, the ultimate confusion.
If you could go back to any time, where would you go.
You have to go further then when you was born,And you can't mess up the time line.
Me:I would be a knight of king Arther.

Toss-up between 13th century Mongolia to join the hordes of Genghis Khan or 5th century Eastern Europe to join the Hunnic Empire. As much as I'd like to see the War of 1812 (USA Vs Britain, round 2) and the Battle of Waterloo (Napoleon's defeat), I doubt I'd much care for living there for an extended period of time. If I must dwell in the Earth's past (I'm pretty fond of the present; hot showers and wireless internet are awfully nice) then watching empires rise and crumble sounds entertaining. Swords were expensive, though, so hopefully I'd have enough warning to bring my own, made with superior modern technology.

Well, if I were stuck in the past, I think the late 1800s/early 1900s is a good place as any. Could bring back knowledge of technology and invent it first! Make some money and live decently comfortable.

If stuck in the past: I ain't going, you can't make me. I like the world as it is, and would rather get bumped ten years forward than any amount of time back, especially if I can't even try to change the timeline.

If it's just to visit...

Can I take a video camera and batteries/memory cards sufficient for the trip? Because I'm SO going to settle every religious debate out there. Christ from the tomb? Let's set up the camera for three days. John Smith looking into a hat with some magic tablets? Let's see what's really in there. Etc...

If I can't make a definitive recording of some sort, then I'm just going back to sightsee. So... I'll go with the Lost Generation. Hemingway, Stein, Fitzgerald--all the big guns of the American Lit canon.

I'm glad you're enjoying it so far, Newbiespud. I wish I had the energy to keep up, but so much has changed since Season of Serpents, when we were only running two tables instead of six to eight. It needed an organizer more comfortable with online organization and communication. Fortunately, one was available.

The important thing is that if you do get involved in organized play, please try to make yourself available to help. Have an idea of what you can offer before you make one, though. Asking, "How can I help?" on the night of the event often ends up adding one more burden to the organizer's list, especially if you end up needing help with it. (Yesterday, I had time to give it to you. Tonight, not so much.)

It's what I do every Wednesday night and where I've been getting my recent stories from. Basically, a DM runs a campaign that WotC gives them at a participating game store. People keep track of their character's progress so if they go to another store they can bring their character along and join in. Supposedly, all the game stores are suppose to be in lockstep advancement with the game so people joining in from another store won't throw everything off. But considering that my game store is the only one to run it in the state and they keep getting all of their stuff late, it's a mute point for our group. You can find more info here if you'd like. Probably does a better job of explaining things.

So Spud, I'm curious now, how did that game go? What did you play as?

EDIT: Spud apparently beat me to it and did a better job of explaining things too.

Lessee... I tried making a character, but that ran up against the start of the session, so I just picked up a pregen hill dwarf cleric and tagged along for one of the Defiance in Phlan missions (scroll down a little), which was presented as the starter Learn-To-Play sessions.

Sounds like a lot of fun. Though I hesitate to think of how I would solve that towns problem, given how past events with my character have turned out. Then again, it's a beginner's session, so the whole thing was probably more straight forward than what I'm used to dealing with.

Anyway, you mostly play 4E, correct? So how was playing 5E? I jumped from 3.5 to 5E so I don't really know how it would feel from someone who has played 4E a lot.

Yeah, we discovered that the lockstep option isn't going to work for several reasons. First, the program must always be accessible to new players, which means there must always be a table for levels 1-4.

Second, the first season's campaign only adhered to League requirements for the first three levels. For good and ill, events become a lot more freeform after that, raising the bar even further in the second book. Some of your DMs will enjoy that challenge. Others will prefer to pass the bar over to someone else. To give you an idea, the second half of the campaign arranges level advancement through milestones. Adventurers League play does not let you use the milestone system. We'll see if this is handled better with the new season, but for now, play it as you must.

Finally, there's the fact that people who played once a week aren't finished with the previous season. Even DMs that misunderstood the chapter system and accidentally finished the first chapters on the first night have only just started the second book around here. That's supposed to be fine, so long as there's someone available to run the new season's core program for anyone that wants that. Fortunately, that doesn't prevent people invested in the adventure they've been playing from seeing it through, so long as there's someone to run it and the program's core adventure for the season.

I'm glad you're enjoying Gamestorm! It turns out I'll be able to drop in for a few hours on Saturday before going to work, so we might meet after all. If you haven't seen it yet, go down to the miniatures area and check out the Equestria game they've got. From the Organized Gaming area, go down one level in the elevator; to your right you should spot the only table with colorful pony figures on it. Good luck!

Chrysalis: In the future, you brought down my invasion of Equestria.
TS: What!? How?
Chrysalis: I attempted to impersonate a member of royalty to seduce your precious brother, who was maintaining the shield. I still don't know how you managed to figure it out. Was my impersonation not convincing? Was there some secret ritual that only you knew?
TS: ...Or maybe it's because you just told me that you did it, so I know what to look for?
Chrysalis: ...I hate time travel.

That's fine. Nothing wrong with pointing out a parallel. But if I started going "DON'T PANIC! Remember where you towel is, you hoopy frood" in response just because you mentioned Douglas Adams that would be similarly annoying. It's just going "hey everyone, recognise this?" which isn't very funny or interesting: people who understand the reference probably don't need it pointing out to them, and the people who don't are just going to be nonplussed.

One time I only had two players available, so I brought out one of my tailored adventures for smaller groups. It pays to be prepared for low player attendance! Anyway, so the Two PCs were hired by a Johnson to make a delivery of a "black box item" out to BFE wilderness. They do so, get paid, but on their way back to Seattle they get lost in the rain.

They find a little truck stop where they meet a nurse who is looking for a couple companions for a trip. They agree to join because she's paying them and she leads them into a red phone booth that ends up going down into what they believe is pretty much a parallel of the TARDIS.

They end up in the early 1810s, fought off some British soldiers, and helped rescue the president from getting killed in the war. They then come back to their time period, paid, and given directions back home.

Thing was that they did not meet a Doctor Who expy.

The entire time these two players were actually taken in by an American History reenactment club that likes to prank passerbys by making them think they have a time machine. Nope! It's just a prop booth the club built to lead to a basement where the room is rotated to another exit behind the truck stop, where all the reenactment buildings are located.

They didn't figure it out until hindsight when they thought about why the nurse only wanted them to use period-specific weapons (fakes that wouldn't hurt actors) and hilariously neither PC made their perception checks to know they were being taken on a fun harmless tour of their club activities.

and what of the futurepastfuture twilight who is attempting to rewind and stop this problem? remember, chrys is looping time, so therefore there are possibly multiple instances of the party in the castle at the same time. also, who's to say that twilight isn't doing this loop herself, to groundhog loop into the best possible outcome? betcha didn't see that coming!

and what of the futurepastfuture twilight who is attempting to rewind and stop this problem? remember, chrys is looping time, so therefore there are possibly multiple instances of the party in the castle at the same time. also, who's to say that twilight isn't doing this loop herself, to groundhog loop into the best possible outcome? betcha didn't see that coming! woah, deja vu. someone have a way to see the timeline i just passed thru? i swear i said this already. oh well, saying it just in case i didn't.

Guys, this isn't hard. The prefix denotes the timeline, suffix denotes the point. Futurepast means Twilight's timeline, and Chrysalis's past. Futurefuturepast is just the next logical progression, having two prefixes to denote a later point in Twilight's timeline.